


Not Enough

by Stariceling



Category: Eyeshield 21
Genre: Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Thoughts of Self-Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 09:22:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15336786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stariceling/pseuds/Stariceling
Summary: Sakuraba is in a good place with his training, with Takami, with life in general. Most days he's fine. Some days he still wants to tear himself apart.





	Not Enough

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus Round 4 prompt:  
> "I work so hard to forget myself  
> & now the trees are full of autumn.  
> This is the time of year when I would rip myself apart  
> if I thought it would do any good."
> 
> \- Nate Pritts, Life Event
> 
> This is just too perfect for Sakuraba. Excuse me while I quietly destroy myself.

There are things Sakuraba has learned not to say around Takami, or anywhere that they might get back to him. Takami is his partner. If he devalues himself he devalues their partnership and Takami by association, so he makes sure to never say anything too far.

He has always done better when he’s moving forward, and when Takami wants him to keep moving forward it’s like the air clears. It’s easier to breathe. It’s the best thing he’s ever had and at the same time it’s nerve-racking. There is something beautiful that he has a chance to build with another person, and if he messes this up he won’t ever have another chance.

Takami is the one person who can never know he never stopped thinking the same things. The same doubts curl through well-worn tracks in his mind.

Most of the time he’s fine. He fights when his muscles try to lock up and turn one mistake into many, and Takami says they just need to switch it up to break the bad streak, and he’s absolutely fine.

For a month he practices and measures progress on a scale that fits him. Somewhere between practice and rest he finds his way into Takami’s arms, and he finds another place he fits. He looks into Takami’s eyes and thinks he knows where he belongs.

He almost forgets how long he’s had the words _not enough_ written inside his skin.

Then the weather, which has been idling towards fall, hits a tipping point. The trees blaze into flame and the afternoon sun is paler and weaker and everything goes right to hell.

Sakuaba’s hands feel numb when he tries to catch. He can’t warm them and he can’t shake feeling into his fingers and nothing they try will break this sudden slump.

It’s not so bad until Takami asks if he’s noticed this problem before and he starts to say he wasn’t good enough for it to _be_ noticeable before. He catches the words halfway down his tongue and awkwardly bites them off.

That evening smells like wasted days and coming frost, and Sakuraba hates himself for things he never even said.

In the bath he runs his hands over his body, over arms and legs and chest and abdomen. He maps out muscles under his skin, thinking them too soft and too small to carry him anywhere he wants to go. (He hasn’t done this in what feels like a long time. He tells himself he hasn’t grown. He’s desperate to believe he has.)

Sakuraba grips his left arm above the elbow and presses his forehead to his knees. He imagines opening his skin and peeling it back. He imagines muscle fiber like dry, useless straw. He imagines how it would feel to dig his fingers into it and strip it from his bones.

In his mind he takes himself apart. He plucks one muscle group after another as if plucking petals from a flower, every one whispering, _not enough._ He wants to break open the ribs holding a heart and lungs that were never quite strong enough. He wants to chew apart the stiff joints of his fingers. He wants to ruin his face so no one will ever recognize him again.

His blunt nails don’t actually break skin. He knows even if he could take himself apart it wouldn’t solve anything. There’s no damage done when he finally picks himself up again.

In the morning there’s a bruise on his arm from holding it so hard. Sakuraba fits his hand over it, feeling strangely powerful for once.

No one notices. Miracle Ito kept a catalog of every scratch, but in the locker room everyone is desensitized to a few unremarkable bruises.

That evening, when he grips with both hands below his knee and squeezes until his arms shiver, for once he’s not thinking of taking himself apart.

There is a tender place later, but it doesn’t show. Sakuraba feels emboldened. He does it again, and again.

He gets away with this for less than a week before Takami gets him alone after practice and asks if someone is bothering him.

Sakuraba has no idea what Takami is talking about at first. He’s getting along fine with everyone, and his fans have been quiet lately. It isn’t until Takami lays hands on his arms, not quite touching the bruises hidden under his shirt, that he understands. Apparently he’s been unconsciously touching them the whole time. Takami is the one person observant enough to notice, but Takami is the one person he doesn’t want to know this.

The marks of his right hand on his left arm and his left hand on his right look like something else from Takami’s perspective. That’s all that saves him. Takami will never believe it’s an accident, but it doesn’t occur to him that Sakuraba would do this to himself.

“It’s fine. It doesn’t affect my ability to catch at all.”

“That’s not the only thing I care about,” Takami says. His warm hands running up Sakuraba’s arms and drawing him close say even more.

Later Sakuraba runs his nails down his arms, knowing that Takami will notice if he takes out his frustrations on himself. Takami will care even if his performance isn’t affected. The more Takami cares, the more he has to lose. Their partnership and their friendship and the tenderness in between, his place in Takami’s eyes, and the taste of the words that come after, “I care about-”

He has something precious to lose. He has something precious. He doesn’t want to lose.

Tomorrow, Sakuraba will invent a way to keep fighting. He has been throwing himself at his dreams to the point of self destruction for so long it’s hard to imagine doing anything else, anymore.

When he folds his arms, hands fitting where Takami’s were, it almost feels like warmth soaking into his cold fingers. Sometimes he wishes he could talk to Takami about this. Sometimes he even tries to find soft, vague words to make it easier, even though he knows he will never use them. He will never admit to Takami that he’s still not enough.


End file.
